Toronto District School Board

Toronto District School Board

The Toronto District School Board wanted a standardized desktop environment in order to increase service levels and decrease support costs. The district has evolved from a 60/40 percent PC/Mac ratio five years ago to a 90/10 percent PC/Mac ratio today. The board hopes to further increase services and decrease its break fix cost by deploying the Windows Vista® operating system. A business value case study conducted by IDC demonstrated that upgrading company PCs to Windows Vista would provide these benefits. Additionally, the analysis indicates that when the Toronto District School Board upgrades its PCs to Windows Vista, it can anticipate saving U.S.$237 per PC annually in reduced IT support costs and user labor:

• IT labor is projected to decrease by 10 percent, or $9 per PC.
• User labor is expected to decrease by 43 percent, or $192 per PC.

 

Situation

The Toronto District School Board is the largest school board in Canada and among the largest in North America. It was created on January 1, 1998, following the amalgamation of seven individual Boards of Education, to serve the 1.4 million electors of the City of Toronto. With annual revenues of U.S. $1.9 billion, the School Board has 10,000 elementary and 5,700 secondary school teachers among its 33,000 employees.

Currently, the Toronto District School Board operates 60,000 systems at 600 sites. Ninety-seven percent of the machines are desktops; the remaining 3 percent are laptops. The majority of the desktop computers, about 74 percent, run on the Windows® 2000 operating system; another 10 percent run on the Macintosh (Mac) operating system. Other operating systems include Windows NT® and Windows XP. Today, 90 percent of the computers are running  Windows, with Dell the desktop supplier of choice; 10 percent of the computers are Macs.

We can use the Windows Vista environment to...ease the pain in the schools.... We can give [students] more rights and more freedom without opening up the systems to more security holes. Craig Kirchner Desktop Management Analyst, Toronto District School Board

Most of the School Board’s 300 servers are IBM. The majority operate on Windows® operating systems (59 percent Windows 2000 Server, 38 percent Windows Server® 2003, 1 percent Windows NT®), while 1 percent run on UNIX and 1 percent run on Linux. The servers running Windows 2000 Server, which is now in its sunset phase, are being upgraded to Windows Server 2003.  Desktops will be upgraded to Windows XP before the final migration to the Windows Vista® operating system by the second and third quarters of 2007. EMC, a storage solutions firm, provides storage functions. For management tools, the Toronto District School Board relies on HP’s OpenView and Computer Associates’ (CA) Unicenter.

A 256-member IT team handles multiple functions including application development, project management, help desk, field services, end-user computing, network services, system operations, and systems integration. The School Board’s IT organization decreased from a staff of 700 at the time of amalgamation in 1998 to 256 members today, thus becoming a much more efficient organization. The team is made up of 53 field technicians, each supporting 1,200 desktops. “So essentially we provide a computing environment for 400,000 users. We have nearly 60,000 desktops in our environment and are located in around 600 locations,” notes Craig Kirchner, Desktop Management Analyst for the Toronto District School Board.

IT currently supports 900 applications. Kirchner adds, “We support this environment with less than 260 people, so the most effective strategy is through heavy standardization. We have very rigorous methodologies and processes in place and have tried to move to a disciplined approach to be able to render services to our client.”

The last major operating system deployment at the Toronto District School Board involved Windows 2000, which was deployed on over 44,000 machines. The deployment used imaging plus the CA Unicenter software distribution. Of the three images created, each took 200 hours to develop.

The School Board’s current multiple-operating system environment does not allow effective centralized PC management or optimal security for desktop and mobile users. Since only 1 to 5 percent of its staff work remotely at any given time, mobility is not an issue. However, with the majority of its users in the 14-to-17-year-old age range, the system is a prime target for hackers. Even though no major virus outbreaks have occurred in the last two to three years, Windows Vista will vastly improve security for the School Board.

Solution

A Windows Vista pilot involving 20 desktops has been launched at the Toronto District School Board. A base set of 21 applications is currently undergoing full testing, with the next 50 most common applications to be tested at a later date. The CA Unicenter Asset Management and Software Distribution system was used to push out the applications. For this deployment, 100 percent imaging from Windows Imaging Format (WIM) was used. Most of the School Board’s machines were recently updated to the final major pre-release version of Windows Vista. A single image was built with this version.

In addition to the initial pilot, two schools with 38 and 56 workstations respectively will deploy Windows Vista. These machines are intended for student use. Another 18 schools have expressed interest and are in line for Windows Vista deployment. The next phase of the Toronto District School Board standardization process will entail rolling out Windows Vista in two labs in each of these18 schools. This deployment will take place over the course of seven weeks. Approximately 1,200 workstations with Windows Vista will be rolled out in early 2007.

The Windows Vista pilot used the Microsoft® Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 to effectively deploy the new operating system as well as the Microsoft Office suites.

So essentially we provide a computing environment for 400,000 users. We have 60,000 desktops in our environment and are located in around 600 locations. We support this environment with less than 260 people, so the most effective strategy is through heavy standardization. Craig Kirchner Desktop Management Analyst, Toronto District School Board

For prior deployments, machines had to be configured on site by field service technicians; but for the Toronto District School Board rollout, additional software will be shipped over the wire. The School Board’s IT team states that Windows Vista will significantly reduce the amount of IT involvement during the refresh cycle and new machine deployment. The IT team adds that the use of Windows Vista provides an opportunity to partner with Microsoft to further implement and promote best practices.

Efficiencies realized with Windows Vista were immediately apparent during the 20-user pilot. Compared with the Toronto District School Board’s previous Windows 2000 and Windows XP deployments, less full-time employee time was required for the Windows Vista rollout, including:

• 28 percent decrease in image engineering time now that image builds need not be created on each hardware platform.
• 21 percent less time on image installation.

Citing Windows Vista deployment tools, the IT team at the Toronto District School Board says that it is very satisfied with its pilot deployment of Windows Vista. Overall satisfaction with Windows Vista over Windows XP is also high, with users noting that Windows Vista deployment was significantly improved compared to Windows XP.

Users also gave high ratings to their experience with specific Windows Vista features such as Windows Defender, which helps protect computers against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats from spyware and other unwanted software.

Toronto District School Board IT team members add that they found the new Group Policy in Windows Vista to be the most beneficial security feature. They liked the ability to have granular control of the policies applied and considered the increased configuration options to be very useful improvements. 

The Zero Touch deployment method will be used to roll out Windows Vista to the Toronto District School Board’s 60,000 machines as part of the Board’s seven-year refresh cycle.  Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) files, part of the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for BDD 2007, are used to augment the capabilities of the CA Unicenter software distribution.

Based on its initial test deployment, IDC estimates that it will cost the Toronto District School Board U.S. $73 in IT labor per PC to deploy Windows Vista throughout its entire organization.

 

 

 

 

 

Benefits

Based on an analysis of current desktop support operations and the results of its Windows Vista trial, the Toronto District School Board can anticipate reducing annual IT labor support costs by 10 percent overall (55 percent for the service desk). The cost of downtime will also decrease about 49 percent. In addition, IDC research with users in organizations of similar size has shown that user time spent in self-service tasks will be reduced by 25 percent, generating U.S. $192 annually in productivity savings for each user.

Users involved in the Toronto District School Board pilot identify two key areas of improvement with Windows Vista: multimedia and security.

Improved Information Use

The media-rich capabilities and additional functionalities of Windows Vista, including Sidebar and Gadgets, offer:

• A multimedia-rich environment: Gadgets can connect to Web services to deliver weather information, news updates, traffic maps, Internet radio streams, and slide shows of online photo albums. Gadgets can also integrate with many applications to streamline how users interact with them.
• Built-in Windows Movie Maker, a major improvement for students still using Windows 2000. Movie Maker is a free video-editing tool.

The multimedia-rich applications available with Windows Vista will enhance the adoption of PCs for media-rich curriculum needs. The move from multiple environments to a single one under Windows Vista will greatly alleviate integration pains for the School Board. Software distribution has been a significant issue in the mixed operating system environment; standardizing on PCs will alleviate, if not eliminate, the difficulties associated with running dual operating systems.

Enhanced Security

A big thing that’s always been a complaint was issues with spyware and adware, things of that nature. Windows Vista comes with Windows Defender built into it. Craig Kirchner Desktop Management Analyst, Toronto District School Board

The enhanced security features in Windows Vista, including anti-spam, antivirus, and anti-malware, provide:

• The ability to implement security at the gateway, as close to the firewall as possible.
• Better execution rights for applications.
• Improved spyware scanning and real-time system monitoring with Windows Defender built in to provide management help.

The tools and features included in Windows Vista have already vastly improved the Toronto District School Board’s image-editing capabilities. Windows Vista offers hardware-agnostic and hardware extraction layer (HAL)-independent images. With HAL independence, a benefit of the retail versions of Windows Vista, the School Board can now move from three HAL types to one.

ImageX, a Windows Vista utility that allows the storage of multiple images in a single file, can be used to create and manage WIM image files. Users mount WIM image files as folders and edit images offline. ImageX is an easy-to-use command-line utility that users run from a command prompt as well as from Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE).

“We can use the Windows Vista environment to, shall we say, ease the pain in the schools. A big thing that’s always been a complaint was issues with spyware and adware, things of that nature. Windows Vista comes with Windows Defender built into it,” explains Kirchner. “Because the security settings [in Windows Vista] are more refined, we can set devices like USB memory sticks so that [the students] can use them.  We can give them more rights and more freedom without opening up the systems to more security holes—providing access without administrative rights.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Optimization

The Toronto District School Board is also certain that Windows Vista will provide:

• A faster logon and logoff process for students. IT plans to lower the current 50-to-60-second process to about 10 seconds. 
• Better overall agility, including a faster cycle time to meet user demands. 
• Reduced investment in platforms.

The School Board expects to continue reducing its TCO with Windows Vista. According to the IT team, Windows Vista will allow the organization to:

• Access and use information more effectively.
• Enhance security.
• Optimize technology infrastructure.
• Improve reliability with self regulations to detect misbehaving applications.
• Significantly reduce help-desk calls during the Windows Vista rollout as opposed to previous rollouts. Currently the 25 agents at the help desk field 150,000 calls per year, about 20 percent of which are for software installations; the remaining requests are related to actual support and problem solving. 
• Simplify desktop configuration with the ability to configure more settings using Group Policy Management Console, which is now integrated into the operating system. 
• Increase IT management efficiency and reduce image-management cost. With Windows Vista, the Toronto District School Board requires only a single image to address a range of hardware instead of the previous three. 
• Centralize IT management.

Outlook

Satisfied with its pilot deployment of Windows Vista, the Toronto District School Board plans to move all of its schools to Windows Vista. Currently in its development phase at the Toronto District School Board, Windows Vista will become current in the third quarter of 2007 with a full blown rollout for the rest of the schools. The deployment of Windows Vista to all 60,000 systems will take place over a period of 2 years.

Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.

For more information about Windows Vista, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

 

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Toronto District School Board products and services, call 416-397-3000 or visit the Web site at:
www.tdsb.on.ca